My obsession with looking perfect? It’s all down to my mother’s many lovers!
Botox. Sharp suits. An addiction to mirrors. One fashion editor admits he’s fixated with his image, but claims...
Since i was a teenager, i have paid more attention than is perhaps healthy to my appearance — whether that means dressing up in a perfectly pressed pale blue shirt (a flattering colour to any skin type), popping on an expertly tailored navy blazer (a much quicker and cheaper way to look in shape than spending hours in a gym) or indulging in some of the quick-fix cosmetic treatments now on offer (Botox to soften the furrows between my eyes, for example).
i have even made a career out of keeping up appearances — launching newspaperstyle supplements, editing glossy magazines, including men’s style bible esquire, co-founding Mr Porter, the men’s version of net-a-Porter, and, this month, publishing a book highlighting the tricks and treatments that can help men look their best.
My God he’s vain, or narcissistic, you might, quite understandably, assume.
But according to the collins english dictionary, a vain person is one who takes ‘an extreme pride in their own beauty, intelligence, or other good qualities’.
in Greek mythology, the handsome narcissus (from whom sprang the adjective narcissistic), fell in love (not out of choice, to be fair) with his reflection in a pool of water. it’s unlikely, however many clothes or treatments i indulge in, that i will ever fall in love with my reflection. But in my early 30s, i became addicted to mirrors. And i’m not being flippant.
if i didn’t have access to a mirror, i would feel uneasy, distracted; instead of focusing on the conversation i was having or the work i was doing, i would be fixating on when i could next check myself in a mirror. Like a heroin addict, i was worried about getting my next fix.
And this wasn’t vanity in the literal sense. i didn’t look in the mirror, inhale my good looks and return to my desk or the dinner table on a self-satisfied high.
i would look in the mirror, check if anything ‘terrible’ had happened to my face — lettuce in my teeth or a bogey in my nose — then return to what i was doing, happy in the knowledge it was the same as it was the last time i had checked. i was still in control of how i appeared.
Asthe years went by, the addiction didn’t subside, but technology made handling it easier. salvation arrived in the form of an app called Mirror, which magnifies your reflection. this has enabled me, when the urge to check my reflection hits at inopportune moments, to pretend i’m checking a text message.
the faces i pull when ‘reading my messages’ — the ones to check my teeth and nostrils — i can explain away as shortsightedness.
so if this obsession with my appearance wasn’t a form of selfadulation, then what was it?
A therapist will tell you, as mine did, that when you can’t control the chaos around you as a child, you grow up determined to ensure that loss of control doesn’t happen again. this can mean developing obsessive compulsive disorders, like my mirror one above. happy face equals happy life.
My childhood was hectic and emotionally disruptive. My mother married four peculiar men in quick succession (one ran away, one passed away, one was carted away and the other we just told to eff off), which forced me, at a young age, into the role of peacemaker.
From the age of six to 16, i tried to make sense, and seek solace, from the tumultuous events that seemed to knock on our door with alarming frequency.
When my biological father walked out, my sister and i not only had to come to terms with our parents’ split, we also had to endure a years-long custody battle involving social workers, barristers and even our local MP.
eventually my mother won, and our father (for reasons i still don’t understand) was told he wouldn’t be allowed to see us again until we turned 18. he was handed one solicitor’s letter a year to give him a brief update on our progress.
Mum soon remarried. even at the age of nine i had my doubts about her choice. he spent more and more time away from home, became increasingly bloated, dressed scruffily and bought endless home-brewing kits.
When he drove me to boarding school after the holidays, the twohour trip would involve at least four stops at a pub while i sat in the car. he was an alcoholic.
My mum and sister seemed oblivious, but i knew for sure. After all, he hid his bottles in my bedroom and i would hear them rattling when he crept in to fetch more as i pretended to be asleep.
One morning, at 4am, when he was only 37, we were woken up by screams and coughing from my parents’ bedroom. Our stepdad’s liver had exploded; there was black bile on the curtains and the carpet. A week later he was dead. i tried to feel sad, but couldn’t. he was another ‘dad’ who wasn’t like the ‘normal’ ones my friends had.
two years later, along came Max. he was fun — eccentric, for sure — but Mum and he seemed happy.
then his eccentricity became concerning. stationery for businesses he was forming would arrive almost daily, he would sometimes camp in the woods and skin rabbits for a day or two (we lived in sussex not snowdonia), and one morning, against our advice, he left for a stroll to the store naked.
i watched through the kitchen window as a police car arrived and took him away.
FOrthe next few years he was in and out of mental institutions. he was diagnosed as bipolar, but refused to take medication. Mum and he split up and, years later, i found him living in a shed with no electricity or running water. i would drive down from London most weekends with food parcels and clean clothes until he was eventually housed in sheltered accommodation by the council.
We kept in touch, by letter, for a few years more. he would often write to tell me i was about to inherit a fortune in diamonds from a mine he was going to bequeath to me. strangely, he’s now dead and there’s no sign of my mine.
You might think, after three not entirely relaxing marriages, my mother would have given up on men. But, ever the optimist, she fell in love once more.
And, yet again, my sister and i had to dress up for another wedding. this one was doomed from day one. he wasn’t nice to look at or interesting to listen to.
if he found a joke funny, he would pretend to pull a loo chain and make a flushing sound. i could tell my mum wasn’t especially keen.
en route to the church i told her it wasn’t too late; that we could drive away. But she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Well, not for nine months. it was then she called me to say she was leaving him, and asked if i’d come and collect her.
number five proved to be her lucky number. her current marriage has lasted almost 20 years. that’s the same amount of time it’s taken me to accept perfection is beyond my reach; beyond everyone’s reach, whether it’s careers, relationships, or the way we look.
i never had a father to help me figure these things out, nor a stable home life to give me the confidence to figure it out for myself. the only person i had to turn to for advice was the man in the mirror. And sometimes even he wasn’t as reliable as i’d hoped.